Dharmesh Shah (Co-founder and CTO of HubSpot) Happy Birthday HubSpot! 9 Lessons From Our First 9 YearsDon’t minimize dilution, maximize impact. If you go out and raise outside funding, resist the temptation to worry too much about valuation (and minimizing dilution). In the grand scheme of things, as long as you’re getting a fair deal, marginal differences in dilution won’t matter. What will matter more is the degree to which you can have an impact (however you measure that). You’re probably going to be happier owning 5% of something great tha… (read more)

Slava Akhmechet (Founder at RethinkDB) 57 startup lessonsIf you have to give away more than 15% of the company at any given fundraising round, your company didn’t germinate correctly. It’s salvageable but not ideal.

Mark Suster (Managing Partner at Upfront Ventures) Founder Showcase – Mark Suster Keynote on VimeoVCs want meaningful ownership. The fairway for a round of venture capital is 25-33% of your company. If you’re a better negotiator, if you’re hotter, if you have more people interested you can get it down to 18%-22%.

Babak Nivi (Co-founder of AngelList and Venture Hacks. Previously, he was an entrepreneur-in-residence at Bessemer Venture Partners and Atlas Venture.) The Option Pool Shuffle – Venture HacksIf you don’t keep your eyes on the option pool while you’re negotiating valuation, your investors will have you playing (and losing) a game that we like to call: Option Pool Shuffle

Sam Altman (President at Y Combinator) Fundraising Advice for YC Companies – Y Combinator PosthavenYou should aim to sell only about 20% of the company in your seed round (though 25% is ok if you’re raising a ‘large’–say more than $2. 5 million–seed round). You should raise enough money to get to your next significant milestone.

Fred Wilson (Co-Founder and Partner at Union Square Ventures) Valuation and Option Pool – AVCOne of the more contentious things in the negotiation between an entrepreneur and a VC over a financing, particularly an early stage financing, is the inclusion of an option pool in the pre-money valuation. As my friend Mark Pincus likes to say, “it’s just another way to lower the price”.